As she interrupted me, her voice rose almost to a scream.

"I must speak to you--I will! I can endure no longer. Sit down and let me speak to you."

Perceiving that, unless I made a scene, I should have to let her at least say something, I did as she requested and sat down. I wished that she would sit down also, instead of standing in front of the door, twisting her hands and her body, and pulling faces--for only so can I describe what seemed to be the nervous spasms which were continually causing her to distort her attenuated countenance.

"I never wished to marry him," she began. "He made me."

"I suppose you mean that he made you in the sense in which all ladies, when their time comes, are made to marry."

"No, I don't. I never wanted to marry him--never. He was almost as great a stranger to me as you are. Why should I marry a perfect stranger, without a penny to his name--me, who had been a single woman, and content to be a single woman, for nearly forty years?"--I could not tell her; I am sure I had no notion.--"This house belongs to me; It was my mother's house before me. He came in one day and asked me if I wanted a waiter--came in with hardly a shoe to his foot. It was like his impudence! I did not want a waiter, and I told him so; but he mesmerised me, and made me have him!"

"Mesmerised you, Mrs. Barnes! You are joking!"

"I'm not joking." To do her justice any one who looked less like joking I never saw. "I've always been a nervous sort of a body. Directly he saw me he could do anything he liked with me. He was always mesmerising me. In less than a month he had mesmerised me into marrying him. As soon as we were married I began to think that he was mad!"--In that case, I told myself, that most promising couple must have been something very like a pair!--"He was always asking me if I would like to sell myself to the devil. He used to say that he would arrange it for me if I wanted. Then he used to dream out loud--such dreams! Night after night I've lain and listened to him, frightened half out of my wits. Then he took to walking in his sleep. The only thing he brought into the place was a little wooden box, tied up in a pocket-handkerchief. I never could make out what was in this box. Once when I asked him I thought he would have killed me. One night, in the middle of a dream, he got out of bed and went downstairs. Although I was so frightened that my knees were knocking together, I went after him. He came in 

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